Lockerbie

One of the world's biggest and most dramatic airplane disasters occurred over Lockerbie, Scotland, on the night of 21st December 1988.  270 people died, including 11 on the ground.  A bomb on board blew the aircraft out of the sky resulting in debris scattered over an area of 800 square miles, every inch of which had to be searched.

As is normal in the UK any disaster such as this is initially considered to be a crime scene and the police treat it as such.  In order to conduct a wide area search for aircraft parts and contents many search parties were setup.  The problem the police had was keeping in touch with each of these groups.  This is where Raynet come in.

Raynet provided a total of 129 radio operators who put in a total of 7000 hours of work over a ten day period, keeping Control aware of their location and providing detailed locations for all items found.

This was the biggest incident in which Raynet have been involved.

As was demonstrated other problems arose due to the sheer numbers of the media that descended on Lockerbie and the surrounding area.  The telephone network could not cope so all the services involved with the clear up had to rely on their own communications capabilities and when these run out Raynet can step in and help.

This latter problem has been demonstrated on a number of occasions.